Amy Chan - Breakup Bootcamp: The Science of Rewiring Your Heart

To my family:

Mee Ping, Kay Mau, Alice, Anita, and Paul

Contents

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.

Proverb

After nine months of dating, Adam told me he loved me for the first time.

After eighteen months of dating, Adam and I agreed that I would move into his apartment after I suddenly lost my job.

After twenty-four months of dating, Adam cheated on me.

We had just returned from a romantic holiday in Europe, and he was going to dinner with the boys. But when midnight rolled around with no sign of Adam, I started to get worried. I texted and called, with no answer. My angst intensified with each hour that passed, and when he finally came home at four A.M., I was livid. Crying hysterically, I interrogated Adam about his whereabouts.

Youre acting crazy, he scolded. He explained that he was with friends and potential investors, having drinks and talking business.

I didnt want to be that crazy girl, so in a puddle of tears, I went to bed. But the next day, I couldnt help but ask for more clarity on the previous evenings events.

Can we just go over what happened, so I can truly put it past me and not feel the need to bring it up again in the future? I asked.

But as Adam recounted the events this time, I noticed that some of the details had changed. The story didnt match up with the one from the night before. As I started to push, he got defensive. He stormed into our bedroom and went back to sleep. I knew something was off. And so, for the first time ever, I did what crazy girls do. I checked his phone.

It didnt take much scrolling to realize that he hadnt been out with investors until four A.M.

Hed been with another woman.

I fell to the ground, curled into a fetal position, and wept. I was unable to move for hours. I felt dead inside.

One stream of questions looped endlessly through my brain:

Did he think she was prettier than me? Did he think she was sexier than me? Was she better than me? What did I do to deserve this? What did I do wrong?

I didnt know it yet, but this betrayal had ripped open a deep emotional wound from childhood I hadnt even known existed. And soon enough, the answer to those questions I was asking myself came rushing out, bringing with it all the pain I had ever felt as a little girl:

I am not enough.

Just two days ago I had been living my dream life, dating a man I thought Id marry, discussing how wed raise our future children. Adam was an entrepreneur; I worked for a smaller company, and the plan was for me to stay at home after we had kids. I had stopped raising my hand for promotions at work because why bother? I wanted a flexible, easy work schedule so that I could go with Adam when he traveled for business. When I got laid off from my job, I amped up my homemaking skills. I learned how to cook lavish meals. I packed his lunch. I was the perfect CEOs girlfriend, preparing to be the perfect CEOs wife. Dating Adam gave me purpose.

I had gone from confident career woman with a perfect life plan, a designer loft, and a boyfriend to jobless, homeless, and boyfriend-less. Everything I had built my identity onstatus, career, six-figure salary, relationshipall disappeared.

I wasnt just mourning the end of my relationship; I was mourning the deaths of my identity and of a beautiful future that would never come.

Too ashamed to move in with my mom, I crashed at friends houses for months while Adam tried to win me back with flowers and overtures of remorse and care. It was clear he wanted to reconcile, but infidelity was one hard line I had drawn in our relationship. When he realized that there was no chance of us getting back together, something snapped. The man I had loved and called my best friend went from apologetic and caring to stone cold. Even though I didnt want to get back together, he was the person whom I was used to turning to for comfort. Thats what the crazy thing isyou cant help but want soothing from the very person who hurt you. But Adam had had enough; he stopped answering my calls and blocked me from his life.

While intellectually I knew we were finished, I still yearned for him. I hated him but wanted him. What a mindfuck. One evening I found out he had canceled the tickets for a concert we had planned to go to together, and I just lost it. The concert was one more thing that he had taken from me, and it pushed me over the edge.

Blinded by sadness and defeat, I started to become anxious that I would never feel any different. This soon escalated into a panic attack. I tried to calm myself by taking a bath, and as the gasps for breath started to settle, my anguish turned into something else: apathy. Now the thoughts looping through my brain became something much darker. Maybe the only way to end the pain was to end my life. I went straight into the logistics of how Id pull it off.

Would it be possible to die by suicide in such a way where I wouldnt traumatize someone who found my body? Well, if the house cleaner found me, it wouldnt be fair since shes a stranger. I cant let my friend who lent me her home find meshe was so gracious to let me stay.

No matter what scenario I came up with, I couldnt figure out how to do it without harming an innocent person. Who would have thought my good manners would save me?

I had clearly hit rock bottom.

The next day, I woke up asking myself these questions:

How did I get here?

Why did this happen to me?

Where do I go now?

I was at a decision point. I could keep spiraling down, or I could fight to get myself back up.

My grief transmuted into anger. I would later learn that, in the stages of grieving, moving from sadness to anger was a positive signit was energy moving. I decided I was done suffering. I made an action plan to get myself back on my feet, and for a while, it worked. But then some reminder of Adam would send me back spiraling, and Id be on the floor crying again.

As time went on, the crying may have become less frequent, but acting bitter and resentful became my norm. I was walking around with an invisible sandwich board that read: THIS HEART IS CLOSED FOR BUSINESS. Friends who visited me found themselves held hostage by my one-woman self-pity show, starring me.

Determined to enter the next stage of my life, I desperately searched for a safe place where I could receive the healing I so needed. I tried everything: therapy, acupuncture, Reiki, meditation, chakra cleansing, psychic readings... you name it. In between the super woo-woo healers advising me to repeat positive mantras and the therapists reminding me how messed up my childhood was, I had no idea if anything was working. I went to Mexico on a yoga retreat, and while it was fun to get my om on, the moment I got home I was faced with all the same feelings I had before I left. I wasnt getting better. I was just suspending time.

One day, as I was repeating my story for the hundredth time to a friend I hadnt seen since the breakup, something shifted. I had exerted so much energy in despising Adam and trying to recruit others to do the same that I was exhausted. I watched myself casting blame and aspersions on everyone and everything, and something dawned on me:

I may not be able to change the events of my history, but I can choose to change the story I attach to those events.

I was choosing a story that wasnt serving me. My anger and pain kept me hyperfocused on how I had been wronged. I needed to reframe my relationship in my story. I needed to see my time with Adam as a bridge to something better, not as a destination I was now never going to reach. The only way to cross the bridge, however, was to take the energy I had wasted hating Adam and channel it into something empowering for myself.